Three years after he picked them to round out the all-girl pop group he’d been assembling, Diddy gave Aubrey O’Day and D. Woods the proverbial boot during Tuesday night’s live season-three finale of “Making the Band 4,”
leaving only Aundrea Fimbres, Shannon Bex and Dawn Richard to carry on as Danity Kane. Diddy’s reason for the dismissals? Fame turned O’Day into someone he no longer recognized, he said via satellite, and D. Woods was merely guilty by association, caught up in the shrapnel of O’Day’s celebrity.

But according to Richard, it was O’Day’s image that gave Diddy pause.

“Puff did not like [O’Day’s] image … where her image was going for the group,” she told UsMagazine.com. “It wasn’t a personal thing,” she added, explaining that O’Day’s recent topless appearance on the cover of Complex magazine wasn’t sending the right message to the group’s fans.

“We had just did a signing with Dollhouse Teen, which is for 13-, 14-year-old young girls,” Richard continued. “So, we can’t do that one day and then the next day do an obnoxious cover. … [Diddy] wants the fans, and he says he can’t do that if we can continue to go in the direction that we were going.”

While Diddy said he would work with Woods in the future, O’Day’s time is over. But the group will continue, Richard said.

“Well, Puff told me specifically that Aubrey is no longer in Danity Kane, and Danity Kane will move forward without her,” she explained, adding that Diddy hasn’t mentioned anything about replacing the two singers. “He has not said anything per that. But I think in my heart that he is going to do another show.”